March 2015

Tendring Topics…….on line

‘This above all, to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day thou canst not then be false to any man’

            In Shakespeare’s Hamlet that was part of the advice that Polonius, a Danish courtier, gave to his son Laertes before the latter embarked on a trip to England, then a distant perilous country, full of temptations and pitfalls for a visiting young Dane with money in his pocket. 

 If Nick Clegg had heeded that advice five years ago I think it very unlikely that his Party would now be facing the possibility of humiliation in the coming General Election.  The Liberal Democrats didn’t really have to be junior partners in a very unequal coalition.  They could have let David Cameron form a minority government promising to support it for as long as it was possible to do so without breaking pledges that they had made to the electorate.

            But he allowed the promise of the empty title of Deputy Prime Minister and two or three Ministerial jobs for a few of his lieutenants to lure him into a coalition and – very shortly afterwards – to break spectacularly the pledge he had made to the electorate  about University Tuition fees.

            Before the last General Election I don’t recall that anyone expected it to result in a hung Parliament and an unequal Conservative/Lib.Dem. coalition.  This time two other parties, the Ukippers and the Greens are serious contenders nationwide and in Scotland the Scottish National Party will almost certainly overturn Labour’s domination of the electoral scene.  Few expect either of the two main parties to achieve an overall majority in the House of Commons. If we are again to have a coalition government which parties will coalesce to form one?

            Nick Clegg appears to be confident that the Liberal-Democrats will again hold the balance and have the choice between coalition with the Conservatives or Labour.  The opinion polls suggest otherwise and so, for what it’s worth, do I.   Since the Lib-Dems, in government, broke promises that they made to the electorate before the last election why should we imagine they’ll be any different now?  I voted for them then but they certainly won’t get my vote in May.  I’m not alone!

            In Scotland the SNP has come on in leaps and bounds since the referendum.   Nicola Sturgeon, their present Leader, seems to be a worthy successor of Alex Salmond. The Tories are evidently fearful that they will have sufficient successful election candidates to join a coalition with Labour and form a government. Many Labour hopefuls fear the same. Well, they certainly brought that possibility onto themselves.  If at the time of the referendum they had been a bit less enthusiastic about preserving the United Kingdom intact there would now be no Scottish MPs at Westminster.   Both Ed Miliband and Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, have said that there will be no such coalition but, of course, politicians don’t believe other politicians’ promises any more than the rest of us do!     

            If there are a substantial number of Scottish MPs I think it likely that they’ll do what the Lib.Dems. should have done last time; support a minority government for as long as its policies are acceptable to them but try to amend or defeat them when they are not.   They won’t get any seats in the government that way but ‘What profiteth it a man (or a political party) to gain the whole world – and lose his soul?’

            A much more sinister, and I fear more likely, outcome of the General Election could be that UKIP will form a coalition with a minority Conservative government, with Nigel Farage as Deputy PM and several Ukip MPs (almost certainly our own turn-coat MP Douglas Carswell would be among them) in senior government posts. The flamboyant and charismatic Nigel Farage would soon outshine the present PM and the Chancellor in the public eye, and probably in the eyes of a substantial number of hard-line Tory MPs.  Farage’s career has, so far, mirrored that of Adolf Hitler in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s.  I fear a future in which he acquired real power.

            But it may well be that all these anxieties and hopes are groundless.  Such is our first-past-the-post electoral system that perhaps, to everyone’s surprise, either the Conservative or the Labour Party will secure a commanding majority and rule the country for the next five years.  If that is so then I can confidently predict  the future outcome:  Britain’s future will not be anything like as happy and as prosperous as supporters of the ruling party promise – but neither will it be quite as disastrous as opponents of that ruling party fear.

            In May I fully intend to vote for the Green Party candidate.  The Greens won’t form a government and it’s unlikely that they’ll be asked to take part in any coalition.  In my own Clacton-on-Sea constituency it’s very improbable that, with our present first-past-the-post electoral system, the Green Candidate will be elected.  I may help him save his deposit though (the Greens rely on the support of its thousands of members.  Unlike other parties, they have neither multimillionaires nor trade unions financing them), and nationally I will add to the number of Green voters.  ‘This above all’ I shall be being true to myself and voting for a party whose policies I wholeheartedly endorse; a party that really does want to make Britain and the world a better place for this and future generations.

            My vote will not be wasted!

           

A Spendthrift’s Charter?

            I have sometimes wondered if the present government likes having a large proportion of the UKs population in debt.  Perhaps it makes the failure of their policies to reduce the national debt substantially, seem less important.  There are student loans, for instance;. I understand that increases in tuition fees result in some students leaving their colleges with a debt burden of as much as £40,000!  Then, of course, the Government’s obsession with home ownership has made sure that thousands of home buyers will owe thousands of pounds to banks or building societies for the whole of their working lifetimes..

            The latest encouragement to financial irresponsibility is making it possible for those who put aside a percentage of their income every month to provide themselves with a pension on retirement, can now withdraw the money at any time from their ‘pension pot’ and use it as they think best.  The hope is presumably that they will re-invest the money to enrich themselves and to help keep the wheels of industry turning.

            It will surprise me if at least some of those pension investors, with the opportunity to get a considerable sum of money into their bank accounts will say, ‘Blow provision for retirement.  Let’s go on a cruise to the Bahamas.  We’ll worry about “tomorrow” when it comes1’

            I’m glad that I was never able to withdraw cash from the ‘pension pot’ into which I paid 6 percent of my salary for most of my working life.  I wouldn’t have squandered it on a spending spree but, when my wife was diagnosed with pulmonary and laryngial TB, I’d have been sorely tempted to withdraw any money I had saved in the hope of buying her better, speedier treatment.   Perhaps (or perhaps not!) in that way I might have bought my wife a speedier recovery; might even have spared her the major surgery that saved her life but left her with a permanent disability.

            There’s no ‘perhaps’ though about the fact that, without an adequate pension, our sixties and seventies would have been much less comfortable, less worry-free and much less pleasurable.  And now that I am in my nineties and have been a widower for nearly nine years, I would be a poverty-stricken housebound cripple without the pension that has provided me with a warm and comfortable home and, among many other things, my mobility scooter and the lap-top on which I am writing these words. Thanks to that pension I am able to remember generously the birthdays of my young great-nieces and great nephew (I have yet to acquire any great grand-children), and to offer visiting family and friends hospitality in a local licensed restaurant!  As some-one once remarked, 'money can't buy happiness, but it can help you to be miserable in comfort!'

 I daren’t think how miserable and bad tempered I’d be without all those things!  I’d advise anybody – ‘However much you may be tempted never imperil your retirement pension. You will live to regret having done so.  It’s extremely unlikely that you’ll make your fortune by gambling on the Stock Exchange – and even less likely that you’ll make it on the National Lottery!’

The Budget

Regular blog readers will know that my idea of a good Budget is one that narrows the yawning gap between the incomes of the very richest and the very poorest people in the UK.   A bad Budget is one that widens that gap.  It follows that it is a long, long time since I have experienced a good Budget and that the one revealed by George Osborne on 18^th March was more blatantly robbing the poor and enriching the wealthy than most.

The threshold of income at which tax becomes liable has been raised.  That means that some low-paid workers will no longer have to pay tax and that every single payer of income tax (including the very wealthy) will benefit.  Those who won’t benefit are the really poor, whose incomes are too low to be taxable.  They will, of course, continue to pay indirect taxes such as VAT and excise duties like those on petrol, alcohol and tobacco.   But that’s not all – the level of liability to pay the higher rate of income tax has also been raised, even higher.  Thus those whom most of us would consider to be very wealthy will receive a double hand-out. Meanwhile, there are to be even more cuts in the  funding of benefits and of public services, which will most  affect the very poor.

Perhaps the most depressing aspect of the news reports was that I didn’t hear a word of protest from Ed Miliband about this particular aspect of the Budget.

Week 32 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

Nick Clegg

          Do you remember the televised debates of the Party leaders prior to our last parliamentary General Election?  I don’t usually listen to politicians sounding off – but I did watch those debates, and thought that I learned from them. 

 I had for many years considered myself to be an internationalist and a democratic socialist. More recently though I had come to the conclusion that the most important task any new British government needed to undertake was the reduction of the yawning gap between the incomes of country’s wealthiest and poorest citizens. I had been impressed by The Spirit Level by Quakers Kate Picket and Richard Wilkinson which demonstrated that reducing that gap benefited the whole community and not just the poor. I had become a modest supporter of the Equality Trust* and had come to realize that public ownership of the means of manufacture and distribution (whether by local or national government) was only one of the means by which greater economic justice could be secured.  .

During the decade of New Labour rule the gap between the incomes of the rich and poor had actually widened!  Lord Mandelson, a creator of New Labour had publicly declared that he had no problem with billionaires.  Well, I believe that while there are families that are homeless, ill-clad, and don’t know where the next meal is coming from, he should have a problem with them! 

Despite being well into my eighties at the time of the last election I was one of those ‘floating voters’ that politicians are eager to persuade. I intended to vote for the candidate of the Party most likely at least to attempt to reduce that ever-widening gap.

           I have to confess it.  I was taken in by Nick Clegg.  He I thought was the most inspiring of the three speakers, and the one with the most radical ideas.  He appeared to have a ‘fire within’ that reminded me of some of the early twentieth century Labour Movement pioneers  Because of this, for the first time in my life, his party received my vote and although with our system of voting it would have made no difference which way I voted, I have since deeply regretted it.

            Tony Blair, although he abandoned many of the purposes for which the Labour Party was created, did at least win elections for his New Labour.  Nick Clegg didn’t.  His party did quite well – but not well enough.  He went into an unequal coalition with the Conservatives and began to drop the principles on which he had been elected.  I had hoped that he might work towards a more equal society.  He supported the new Chancellor’s early gift to the super-rich, the reduction of the highest rate of income tax, thus benefiting those with a taxable income in excess of £150,000 a year – while beginning an austerity programme that particularly affected the poor and disadvantaged!  In his election campaign he had tried for the student vote – promising not to raise tuition fees.  In coalition this was one of the first promises that he abandoned.

            He would no doubt claim that by membership of the coalition he had been able to modify his Conservative partners more objectionable policies in a way that would have been impossible had he been in opposition.  In the world of British politics today, I don’t believe that that is true.  When a government doesn’t command the majority of votes in the House of Commons a determined opposition party can support the government on matters about which they agree or at least find acceptable, and join (or threaten to join) with other parties to defeat legislation that they find unacceptable.  Thus, in modifying the policies of a ‘minority’ government  a determined opposition party can exert more effective influence than a coalition partner.

            Nigel Farage’s UKIP has an increased representation in the European Parliament - where the Ukippers revealed themselves as an ill-mannered rabble, insulting their fellow parliamentarians by ostentatiously turning their backs on the European Anthem!. In the European and local government elections UKIP have shown themselves capable of appealing to the xenophobia, greed and fear of a great many electors and of taking votes, particularly from Conservative candidates.  They haven’t yet any Westminster MPs and they haven’t gained control of any local authority, but they have gained many Council Chamber seats and, again and again, have driven representatives of the Conservative, Lib.Dem. and Labour parties into ‘third place’ in the polls.

            Anybody surveying the UK political scene today can see that it is the Ukippers rather than the Lib.Dems. who pose the greater threat to an overall  Conservative Majority at next year’s General Election. Ukippers themselves are becoming increasingly confident.  I have always regarded our own Conservative MP Douglas Carswell as a Crypto-Ukipper.  He has the essential qualification of acute Europhobia and has even been singled out for praise by Nigel Farage.  Yet UKIP has selected a candidate to oppose him in the forthcoming General Election.  That candidate probably won't win – but he could take enough Conservative votes to ensure that Douglas Carswell doesn’t win either.  It isn’t surprising that David Cameron is much more concerned with out-flanking Nigel Farage with ever-more Europhobic measures to halt the flow of EU visitors and immigrants, than he is with the concerns of his own Lib.Dem. ‘deputy’.

   I think it likely that Nick Clegg will be remembered in history as the man who finally destroyed the once-great Liberal Party.

*For further information about the Equality Trust and ‘The Spirit Level’ contact www.equalitytrust.org.uk or Equality Trust, 18 Victoria Park Square, London E2 9PF   Email – info@equalitytrust.org.uk

The Slaughter of the Innocents!

          Last week the CIA announced that it had found no evidence of Russia being directly involved in the destruction of that Malaysian air liner.  That, I am sure, was not what their political bosses had wanted them to report and I am equally sure that, had the Russians been directly involved, the CIA would have found evidence of it.

            On 28th July,  a spokesman for the Kiev Ukrainian Government declared that the aircraft’s ‘black boxes’ had revealed that the air liner had been destroyed by a ground-to-air missile as had been surmised.  That was surely extraordinary.  We had been told that the ‘black boxes’ had been handed over intact by the pro-Russian insurgents to representatives of the Malaysian Airline and that they were being sent to the UK to be opened and have their contents analysed.  How, I wonder, did those boxes fall into the hands of the Kiev government and had they tampered with them in any way?

It was a fortnight before international inspectors were able to secure the site of the crash and begin to make a proper inspection of the remains of the plane and even now their situation is far from safe and secure.  This has not been because of lack of co-operation from the insurgent authorities (they, after all, found and secured the ‘black boxes’ and handed them over untouched to the Malaysian air line). The reason the inspectors can't get on with their work is continued shelling by the artillery of the Kiev Government and the refusal of that government’s forces to cease their attacks while inspection is going on. 

In fact, we still don’t know for certain how that air disaster took place.  We don’t know if it was shot down by a missile and, if it was, who fired that missile, why they fired it and from where.   This hasn’t prevented the leaders of the EU from deciding that it was all the result of Russia’s support of the Ukrainian rebels – and they have imposed a further set of economic and political sanctions on Russia.  Meanwhile, NATO is holding a series of naval exercises in the Baltic Sea and the UK is sending troops to take part in military exercises in Poland. Both actions are surely quite uncalled for and dangerously provocative.  Can we really have already forgotten the horrors of the two twentieth century world wars?  The few of us who still remember World War II certainly haven’t.

Meanwhile in the ‘Holy Land', Israel is conducting a bloody and destructive campaign in Gaza which has so far resulted in the deaths of nearly 2,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians and many of them women and children. A fragile temporary cease-fire lasted only a matter of hours and the Israeli Prime Minister has suggested that the campaign may go on for much longer. Yes, they have been provoked.  HAMAS too bears some responsibility for the slaughter – but the Israeli response has been and is totally disproportionate.  The situation is made worse by the fact that Israel exerts a tight blockade on Gaza which means that the unfortunate victims haven’t even the choice of fleeing their country and becoming refugees. Twice at least, Israeli forces have bombed or shelled United Nations buildings in which hapless civilians have sought safety.  ISIS, Al Qaeda and the like must be delighted by the extra recruits that the situation is producing!

Why is there not even talk of sanctions and dire ‘consequences’ for Israel and those who support her and supply her with the weapons of death?  Israel is responsible for many more deaths and much more destruction than those east Ukrainian insurgents.  Are the lives of Middle Eastern women and children less sacred than those of European countries?  Or is it, as I suggested in this blog a fortnight ago: It’s not what is done, it’s who it is does it, that really matters?  How much more strident and belligerent the voices from 'the west' would have been if only it were the 'Russians’ who were slaughtering innocent women and children in Gaza! 

Week 1 2013

Tendring Topics.......on Line

‘It was the best of times. It was the worst of times’

            So begins Charles Dickens ‘Tale of Two Cities’, referring to the end of the 1780s and beginning of the 1790s, a time in which hope at the beginning of the French Revolution ended in despair as it was succeeded by the ‘reign of terror’.

            In some respects the same could be said of the year that we have just left behind us.  It was the year of the London Olympics, an organisational triumph thanks at least partly to the public sector (the army and police) stepping in when a giant private sector organisation proved incapable of honouring its contract to provide security.  It was an unequivocal triumph for Britain’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes who collected an unprecedented haul of medals outstripping, per capita, giants like the USA and China.  Outside the Olympics there was the first ever triumph of a British cyclist in the international Tour de France and the first British victory for a very long time in the American Open Tennis Championship.

            The celebration of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the 60^th year of her reign, was also deemed a success.  Certainly the members of the public were enthusiastic enough.  It was heart-warming to see the Queen’s subjects – white, black and every shade of brown – united in celebrating the Jubilee as well as in cheering on the British contestants in the Olympics.

            The weather, which was mercifully kind for the Oympics, did its best to dampen the Jubilee celebrations – and the weather has really given us the worst of times during 2012.  A wet late spring was followed by a wet summer and a wet autumn. Even now as we are gripped by winter, depressions  continue to sweep in from the Atlantic and again there is flooding to parts of Britain where, last year, some homes were flooded as often as three times in as many months.  Those of us living in southern East Anglia, once again spared the worst of the extreme weather, find it difficult to imagine the misery and despair of those whose homes are flooded again and again*.

            Yet many in Britain still refuse to accept the reality of global climate change. At international conferences delegates talk and talk and talk – and fail to take effective action!

            Then, there has been the political and economic situation.  Britain’s public services are being run down.  Public buildings and parks are neglected, highways pot-holed and the surfaces of footpaths broken and dangerous.  Services supporting the poor, the disabled, the very young and the very old, are slashed and financial support of the poor reduced.  A record number of home buyers who had imagined they were ‘home owners’ have been dispossessed and rendered homeless.  And there is no longer a widely available stock of Council houses available as a safety net.  In the 1950s and 1960s when we were still recovering from World War II, rough sleepers were rarely seen on Britain’s streets and street beggars virtually unknown.  Into what a ‘Brave New World’ we have been led by Margaret Thatcher and her successors and by Tony Blair’s New Labour!  It isn’t surprising that extremist groups like the BNP and UKIP are beginning to flourish and that young people, seeing neither possibility nor hope of a brighter future, are taking to all-night partying, booze and drugs to escape from ‘a present’ that is becoming unbearable.

            In recent weeks I have wished a great many people a Happy New Year!   That really was a triumph of optimism over probability.  Perhaps a Rather Happier New Year is the most that any of us can hope for.

*On new Year's Eve we were promised  sunnier, drier weather during the first fortnight of 2013
  I hope that the weather-experts are right!

‘Twas the week before Christmas’

…….and Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democrats decided that it was time that he distanced the policies of what was left of his party from those of his senior coalition partners, the Conservatives.  Perhaps, who knows, he would manage to breathe new life into a political body that, under his leadership, was showing every sign of being about to breathe its last.

            He certainly did so in a spectacular manner – by positioning himself on the right of the Conservatives!  The coalition had promised that pensioners’ benefits would remain sacrosanct, at least during the term of the present government.  Nick Clegg would like to break that promise.  It is, he said, quite absurd that  multimillionaires who happen to be of pensionable age, should be entitled to the same free NHS prescriptions, the same winter fuel allowance, the same free bus pass, and the same free tv licence, as the state pensioner with no other source of income.

            And so, of course, it is.  But what should be the remedy?  Nick Clegg suggests means-testing these benefits.   I don’t think that that prospect would worry multi-millionaire pensioners in the very least.  How many of them bother with their free bus passes?  How many of them, in fact, ever get onto a bus?  Nor, I think, would any of them bother in the least about NHS prescriptions, winter fuel allowance and a free tv licence?   And how much money would the government save by excluding them from privileges that mean very little to them and so much to other old people?   My guess is, precious little.

            The government would get much more if the means testing were to be carried out further down the line to affect every pensioner having a source of income beyond  the state pension. That would raise more money but would also cause real hardship to a great many people, and that, I have little doubt is what would happen if means testing were to be introduced into entitlement for age-related benefits.

            I do have a modest income beyond my state pension.  I would not miss the free bus pass because I am no longer physically capable of mounting and travelling on a bus. I do though appreciate my winter fuel allowance, my free NHS prescriptions and my free tv licence.  So do many thousands of other pensioners in a similar position to me.  Were we to be means-tested out of our entitlement to them we would certainly make our anger very clear at the next general election!

            A fairer idea, to which I personally would have no objection, would be to continue with universal benefits but make them subject to income tax.   The really poor would then continue to get completely free benefits while those of us who are better off would pay back a proportion of the value of those benefits in tax, the wealthier among us paying the most and the least wealthy the least.

            Such a system could be further improved by radically changing our income tax system so that liability to pay is properly and proportionately graduated, making the multi-millionaire pay the same proportion of his income back in tax as do those in ‘the squeezed middle’ that we hear so much about and those, like myself, who are by no means wealthy but do pay income tax.  Just think how much simpler life would be for all of us if the only ‘means test’ we ever had to face was our income tax assessment!  Paying benefits to millionaires wouldn’t then matter in the least.  A fairer income tax system would mean that they wouldn’t be quite so wealthy and would also mean that most of those benefits would be paid back to the state in tax.

            No, it isn’t going to happen in my lifetime and probably not in the lifetime of any present blog reader.  I am sufficiently an optimist though, to believe that it will happen – though perhaps only in the very distant future.

‘Of Courtesy…..

          Wrote Hilaire Belloc, ‘……..It is much less, than courage of heart, or holiness – Yet, as I walk it seems to me, that the Grace of God is in Courtesy’.   And it seems to me as I go about my day to day affairs that courtesy, or what we used to call ‘common politeness,’ is in short supply – particularly among young people – at the beginning of the 21^st Century.

            For that reason I was very pleased to hear on the tv that one secondary school in Cornwall was giving its male pupils lessons in ‘good manners’. This was at the special request of the girl pupils who were, it must be supposed, shocked and embarrassed by the oafish behaviour of their male companions on social occasions.

Just eighteen

Fifteen - almost sixteen

            Lessons were being given on appropriate behaviour when escorting a lady to a restaurant for a meal, how to handle the table napkins (never, ever refer to them as serviettes!) and which knives, forks or spoons are to be used for which dishes.  All very well, of course, but I remember the occasion  when (aged just eighteen) I had first escorted my future wife (not quite sixteen) for a meal after we had watched Stage Coach, featuring a very young John Wayne, at a local cinema. It was to a fish restaurant attached to a nearby pub where we enjoyed fish and chips followed by ice cream!. We had no trouble whatsoever in sorting out the table napkins and the cutlery.  I do though remember my mum berating me afterwards for having taken a young and impressionable girl into licensed premises, though my  new girlfriend had drunk nothing stronger than lemonade while I, demonstrating my adolescent machismo (as much to the the waitress as to my companion!),  had ordered ‘a half of best bitter’.

            I hope that, as well as initiating those young Cornish lads into the niceties of dining out, they instructed them in such basics as saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ on the appropriate occasions, not appearing unkempt and unshaven at social events, giving way graciously when appropriate, offering one’s seat to ladies and the old and/or disabled, taking off one’s hat/cap/hood when entering a house, not interrupting someone else (however boring!), and learning that the  correct response to ‘How d' you do?’, is not a detailed description of your state of health, but a murmured ‘How d' you do?’ in reply, as you shake the proffered hand of friendship.  Oh yes – and how to converse without using bad language, text-speak, or interjecting ‘know what I mean?’ at the end of each sentence.

Shades of Meaning

            How strange it is that different people can give an entirely different interpretation of circumstances that most of us thought ‘spoke for themselves’.

            I remember a friend who was convinced that the parable of the widow’s mite meant that small donations, no matter from whom, to good causes were just as praise-worthy as large ones.  Then there was Mrs Thatcher’s interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan.   The important thing, she said, was that the good Samaritan had sufficient money to pay for the robbery victim’s board and lodging.

            The recent appalling mass murder of young children and their teachers in a New England primary school underlined to most of us the fact that in the USA far too many people own lethal weapons due to the laxity of the ‘gun laws’ there.  The American National Rifle Association drew almost exactly the opposite conclusion.  There weren’t enough guns in the hands of ‘the good guys’.  One of its members said that those who opposed teachers carrying hand guns in school ‘had blood on their hands’.  A spokesman for the Association urged that every school in the USA should have an armed guard to counter possible future attacks!

            Those comments reinforce my conviction that, despite the fact that the Americans speak a similar language to us, we Brits are culturally as well as geographically and historically, much closer to our mainland fellow-Europeans than to those with whom we are said to have a ‘special relationship’.   

           

             

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[edit]APenalising the Old

Week No 40 2012

Tendring Topics.......on Line

Patronising the Poor?

            Nick Clegg continues to insist that the wealthy must make a bigger contribution to the nation’s finances, though quite how he hopes to achieve this is far from clear.   There are financial incentives to encourage universities to accept more students from deprived backgrounds and schools are given similar incentives to provide extra educational help to children from deprived families.  There are free school meals for children who need them and free public services for those in receipt of means-tested benefit.  Meanwhile well-meaning politicians boast that they have removed the income tax burden from thousands of less-well-off families by raising the level at which this tax becomes liable.

            These measures are like treating acute pneumonia with a couple of aspirins!   Our aim should surely not be to make poverty more tolerable but to reduce and ultimately abolish it.   I do not believe that it is a good idea to remove those with low incomes from income tax liability.  This encourages the idea of the division of society into the tax payers, whom the taxman robs of the fruit of their labours, and the rest of the population who benefit from this, including of course the scroungers and benefit cheats of whom we read so much in the popular press.   It encourages folk like Mr Romney, Barak Obama’s opponent in the forthcoming Unites States Presidential Election to announce that he has no interest in the 47 percent of the American population who are not wealthy enough to be taxed.

            In this blog I have again and again stressed my conviction that income tax should be the principal source of government revenue and should be regarded as our annual subscription for membership of a very exclusive international club; British citizenship.  It should be a fixed proportion of the gross income of every adult British citizen without exception, from the very poorest to the very wealthiest.  The contribution of those surviving on job seekers’ allowance, disability living allowance, the state retirement pension, or the minimum wage would be very little, while that of the very wealthy would be a great deal. We would though all be contributing an equal proportion of our income to our country’s needs.  All of us, from the very lowest to the very highest, would have a stake in our country’s future prosperity.  Did not Jesus Christ point out that the widow who contributed her ‘mite’ to the Temple Treasury was making a bigger sacrifice than the wealthy – since they merely handed over part of their surplus wealth while  she gave all that she had? 

            The proportion of each adult’s income that would be needed to balance the nation’s books could be worked out every year.  If everybody contributed I’d be surprised if it would need to be higher than 20 percent.  This, I believe, would be sufficient to fund all necessary public services (a government sensible enough to adopt such a system would surely also have the sense to scrap those nuclear submarines!) and to pay generous allowances to those unable to work or unable to find work.

            Don’t let us patronise the poor.   Let’s abolish them!

It’s just a word!

           As incidents go, it wasn't  a very important one, but Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell’s reaction when frustrated by the Police in Downing Street, certainly demonstrated that when the occasion arises, well-heeled patricians from society’s top drawer can be as bad tempered and foul-mouthed as the very toughest and roughest of plebs.   I thought that Mr Mitchell was at his most objectionable, not when he lost his temper (we all do that sometimes!) but when he made a half-hearted apology, implying that the long-suffering police were lying about the actual words that he had used.

 It all brought to my mind (as so many things do these days!) an incident that occurred, it must have been in 1932 or ’33, when I was eleven or twelve and we had Ron, a cousin of mine from Bethnal Green, staying with us in Ipswich during the school holiday.  Ron’s dad, my uncle, was a mounted policeman and the family lived in married quarters in Bethnal Green Police Station.  Ron was a few months younger than me.  We were good friends and we got into all sorts of trouble together.

Ron (on the right) and I

           

On one occasion I remember that something had upset him and he used one of the words that, from Mr Mitchell’s lips, have caused offence.  No – it wasn’t ‘plebs’. I doubt if Ron would have heard of that.  It was the other one and, just like Mr Mitchell, he used it ‘adjectively’.  It happened that he was at the time within the hearing of my normally easy-going mother – and I was totally astonished at her reaction.  That, she thundered, was a truly dreadful word that was used only by the very lowest of the low.   If she ever heard him say it again he’d be packed straight off to Bethnal Green and his mum and dad would be told why!  Goodness!  He certainly didn’t use it again, or at least not when my mum was around.

            This was in the early 1930s and I don’t recall often hearing that word again until I was in the army, nearly ten years later.  Even there it was used quite sparingly until I was a PoW when we really did have something to swear about.  I remember it particularly in Germany where we were working regularly both with German civilians, and with conscripted slave-workers from Russia, the Ukraine and other occupied countries.  They were fascinated by our bad language and our ready use of it, and would try with varying degrees of success to follow our bad example!  Perhaps, even as I type this, some very elderly Ivan or Natasha (well, I’m still around so why shouldn’t they be?) in St. Peterburg, or Odessa or Kiev, may have clumsily knocked over a glass of vodka and have used an expletive that, as they explain to their puzzled grandchildren, they learned from some Anglishky comrades way back in 1944!

            Here in England the use of that word is no longer limited to the lowest of the low’ as my mother had insisted it had been in 1932. You may well hear it if you walk behind any group of school children chatting to each other! It is to be found in the first line of a poem by a celebrated modern poet.  It was used very effectively in the acclaimed film The King’s Speech. It is used, as we now know, by ex-public-schoolboy cabinet ministers. It sometimes appears in the press and has lost much of its ability to shock. However, I am old fashioned enough to be able to declare confidently that you will never come across it in Tendring Topics…….on line! 

A Footnote

While I was writing the above I found myself thinking of my father.  He died suddenly of a coronary thrombosis in 1939 at the age of 57.  I was 18 and just in the army at the time.  My father had enlisted in the 17^th Lancers in 1901 when he was 18 and left the army as Regimental Sergeant-Major of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps in 1922 after having completed 21 years service.  At the time of his death he was employed as clerk, dispenser, veterinary nurse and general dogsbody to a local veterinary surgeon.

      As I wrote about the use of bad language by myself and others I realized, with some astonishment, that I had never at any time throughout my childhood and youth heard him swear or use any ‘bad language’. On reflection, I hope that as far as their childhood was concerned, my sons would say the same of me.  How about during the years since their childhood? .............. well they do read this blog, so I had better claim no more than that neither they, nor their mum, were ever either the cause or the  object of any verbal lapses that I may, very occasionally, have had!  

  

Above are pictures of my father - as a staff sergeant before his final promotion to Regimental Sergeant Major and, as I knew him best, a few years before his death.

A Promise Fulfilled (sort of!)

          When, earlier this year, Tendring District Council introduced its new refuse and recyclables collection scheme there was a storm of protest.  Apart from the fact that the new scheme demanded extra effort from householders, there were two main criticisms of the new system.

            One I wrote about in this blog a few weeks ago.  It was that with the new scheme only plastic bottles (milk bottles, cleaning fluid bottles and the like) were collected for recycling.  Plastic bags and wrapping and plastic food containers, that had been collected for recycling under the old regime, now had to be put into our black plastic bags for landfill.  That problem may be solved in a few years’ time when it is hoped that a new plastics sorting centre will be built in the south of the county.

The other criticism was that, presumably to save a few pounds, there were no lids provided for the red boxes intended for the reception of waste paper and cardboard for recycling.  We in Clacton may have the lowest rainfall in the UK but there are still occasions (particularly during this summer!) when the contents of the box could be reduced to a soggy mess.  We do have our fair share of ‘sea breezes’ and these are quite capable of scattering paper from the uncovered red boxes far and wide.

            The justification for this complaint was demonstrated on every breezy collection day, with paper litter bestrewing footpaths and nearby front gardens.  The council promised to do something about it.  And now they have, but in a way that explains my ‘sort of’ in the heading above.   They have obtained a supply of fitting plastic lids for the red paper-and-cardboard boxes but, presumably again to save themselves a few pounds, are not arranging for the refuse/salvage collectors to leave them with householders on their rounds.  The lids are available for householders to collect from centres in the district. We Clactonians can pick one up from the reception desk at Clacton Town Hall.

            That’s fine for car owner/drivers but what about the rest of us?  The lid will hardly go in a shopping basket and, although light enough in weight, isn’t the easiest thing to carry under one’s arm!  Were it not for my mobility scooter (my ‘iron horse’) I would be housebound.  Would I be able somehow to load the lid onto it I wondered.   I asked an anonymous but helpful voice on the phone, ‘Has the council made provision for delivery of lids to the elderly and disabled?’   ‘Only to those who have already made arrangements for their refuse and salvage to be collected from outside their back door’, came the reply. That ruled me out! A kind neighbour puts my plastic sack and salvage boxes out every week.  I had friends whom I was sure would collect a lid for me if asked, but I don’t like taking advantage of their good nature unless absolutely compelled to do so.

            I drove my scooter to the Town Hall.  At the reception desk a very helpful young lady supplied me with a lid and even gave me a tip on how best to transport it (Clacton is a town of mobility scooters and I clearly wasn’t the first with the same problem!).  I got it home safely.

            So – I now have my full quota of refuse and recyclables collection equipment, and hope, with the help of my friendly neighbour, to have my black plastic bag for landfill, my food waste container (never much in that!) and either my red paper-and-cardboard box, or my green plastic-bottles-and-metal-can box at the entrance to my driveway ready for collection early on every Tuesday morning.

Week 36 2012

Tendring Topics......on Line

‘Underneath the Street Lamp…….’

          Last week in this blog I wrote of how a recent photograph of a Red Cross Parcel had brought back memories of my life long ago.  These were reinforced a few days later by a tv interview with Vera Lynne, several years older than me but still very active and living quite near those ‘white cliffs of Dover’ over which her metaphorical bluebirds can now fly freely! No-one, ex-service or civilian, who lived through World War II can ever forget her melodious voice on the radio assuring us all that ‘We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when, but I know we’ll meet again some sunny day’ and that some day we and our girl-friends would again be, ‘Arm in arm together, just like we used to be.  Arm in arm with you sweetheart meant all the world to me’.

            I was reminded of another song of World War II that is not primarily associated with Vera Lynne (though she did sing an English paraphrase of it to its by-then-familiar tune)  It is the one song that became popular with the rank and file of the opposing armies.  Originally a German song, loved by the Afrikakorps and broadcast over the German forces radio in occupied Belgrade, it was first ‘captured’ by the British 8^th Army in the North African desert.  I understand that it was equally popular on the Eastern Front and that there was a Russian as well as an English version!

            It was Lili Marlene (the Germans spell her surname Marleen) derived from a poem entitled The Song of the Lonely Sentry’ written  in World War I, about a young woman who stood under the street-light by the gate of the barracks, waiting for her boy-friend to emerge. It did not have a happy ending. Her boy-friend, a young soldier, kissed her ‘beloved mouth’ in his dreams and vowed that when the cold mist of death overtook him he would return to that street-light ‘Wie einst Lili Marleen, Wie einst Lili Marleen’ (‘where once was Lili Marlene, where once was Lili Marlene’).

            It was a universal theme among soldiers of every nation on active service.  We all knew that some of us would never go home to our wives or girlfriends.  Out of my own artillery regiment of some 700 to 800 men, mostly volunteers still in their early twenties, 100 never returned. Needless to say it was not a message that the Nazi authorities wanted spread.  Goebbels tried to ban the song but General Irwin Rommel commander of the Deutsch Afrikakorps, then a popular hero, liked it and his will prevailed.   Its singer though, Lale Andersen, Vera Lynne’s German opposite number, was regarded with suspicion and forbidden to sing her most popular song on the radio.  She remained out of the limelight for the latter part of World War II.

            Browsing the internet with the aid of Google I was astonished to come across a statue of Lili Marlene, standing beneath a street lamp, on the German North Sea Island of Langegoog (according to Google it means ‘Long Island’ in the Platt Deutsch dialect).    It is, in fact, a memorial to singer Lale Andersen who lived for several years on the island and, after her death in Vienna in the 1970’s, was buried there.

            It is a fine and appropriate memorial but I have to say that the  attractive young woman sculpted there isn’t my idea of Lili Marlene.  My wartime memories of both England and Germany suggest that, at that time, no young woman of either country would have dreamed of wearing trousers, particularly on a date. 

Heather Gilbert aged 19, my ‘Lili Marlene’! A photo taken while I was overseas, and posted to me while I was a PoW in Germany.  Note the Royal Artillery Badge brooch which clearly says ‘my boyfriend is a gunner – hands off!’

I have two mental images of the Lili who waited under the streetlamp.  The first is of a young girl still in her teens wearing her best dress, perhaps a little faded after three years of war. Her trusting blue eyes anxiously scan the uniformed figures emerging from the barrack gate for a young man whom she hadn’t known for long but whose life she feels she is destined to share.  Yes, I am thinking of my own girlfriend as she was at that time. I believe that we all, British and German alike, saw something of our own girlfriends in that patiently waiting Lili Marlene!    

The other Lili of my imagination is older – in her early thirties perhaps; quite sure of herself and possibly wearing a well-cut raincoat over a tweed skirt, together with a beret, or perhaps a cap, at a jaunty angle.  She would have a friendly smile for everyone, with a surreptitious wink for one or two favoured ones, and a warm embrace for her evening’s escort.   She is perhaps the more likely Lili Marlene of the two.

            The sculpture is of a charming young lady – quite possibly engaged to an ambitious young lieutenant and destined (though not in those trousers) to grace the officers’ mess, delighting the colonel with her respectful smile and impeccable manners.   I don’t really think though that she would have evoked romantic daydreams in rank-and-file soldiers such as I was.

            She is clearly the sculptor’s vision of Lili Marlene - but she isn’t mine!

Nick Clegg – Champion of the poor?

          That is how he would undoubtedly like to see himself and that is how, before the general election, thousands of misled voters were persuaded to see him.  I was one of them!

            Now he has caused a flutter in the coalition dove-cote by making the suggestion that, on a purely temporary basis, the rich might perhaps be persuaded to make a rather larger contribution to the national economy than they do at present.  This suggestion, timid and half-hearted as it is, comes strangely from a politician who a few months ago raised not a discordant voice when the Chancellor of the Exchequer decided to reduce the tax liability of the very wealthy by lowering the top rate of income tax.

            Even this latest very modest suggestion has provoked a wholly predictable response from Chancellor George Osborne.   We mustn’t try to make the wealthy pay their fair share of the nation’s debt because if we do so they might up sticks and depart elsewhere, taking their wealth with them.   Does he really suggest that wealthy folk have so little patriotism and love of their country that they would desert it for a few extra millions?

I have an abiding memory of hundreds of young British men who, in 1939, voluntarily abandoned their careers for a paltry two shillings (10p) a day, and offered their very lives to their country when it was in peril. I can’t believe that seventy-three years later a substantial number of wealthy Brits would abandon their homeland when it is in economic peril rather than surrender to it a fair proportion of that wealth.  And is it not almost equally incredible that also-wealthy top politicians should consider that behaviour to be perfectly reasonable?  Surely great wealth can’t have quite such a corrupting influence.

Sir Walter Scott asked incredulously. Breathes there a man with soul so dead that to himself he hath not said, ‘This is my own, my native land?’   Today it appears that we could assure him; Well yes, there are quite a few of them.  They have all got a few millions safely tucked away offshore – and they are prepared to live anywhere in the world in order to hang on to every penny of them. Sir Walter concludes in his poem that, if there are any such wretches, they are destined to go to their graves 'unwept, unhonoured and unsung’.  I doubt if that thought bothers them much.

If it is indeed true, then ought not David Cameron and George Osborne be thinking of ways of stemming that defection, instead of simply shrugging their shoulders and regarding it as inevitable?  Is it right for instance, that those who have deserted their country to preserve their wealth, should continue to hold British passports, have the right to vote in our elections, and to enjoy the very considerable privileges of British citizenship?

 Once again I suggest that the main source of our national income should be a ‘citizenship subscription’, of say 20 percent of gross income, levied on every British citizen from the poorest of the poor to the wealthiest of the wealthy!  Then we will value and honour our citizenship and only then will the UK become a true ‘commonwealth’ and politicians be able to claim with truth that ‘we’re all in this together’.

            

Week 39.10 28th Sept. 2010

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Pope Benedict’s Visit

I thought that it was probably wise to withhold comment on the Pope’s official visit to Britain until he had safely returned to Rome. Had I dared to do so while he was still here, fate would probably have arranged some unexpected triumph or disaster!

I am very glad that his visit proved to be a great success and was marked neither by the apathy that had been prophesied by much of the press, nor by the widespread protest and outrage that had been joyfully anticipated by some of our proselytising enemies of religion. There were protestors it is true, but fewer than had been anticipated and with very diverse causes. Peter Tatchell and his disciples haven’t really all that much in common with Rev. Ian Paisley and his, nor have campaigners for women priests, abortion-on-demand enthusiasts, and victims of the appalling child abuse scandal, a great deal of common ground.

I wasn’t impressed with the argument that none of the cost of the Pope’s visit should have been met out of taxation. Remember the much greater cost of the State Visit of the King of Saudi Arabia with his enormous entourage. He is arguably the ruler of the least liberal country in the world and the one with the least respect or regard for human rights? I did resent having to help pay for his luxurious welcome.

At a meeting of ‘the big three’ during World War II when Churchill, or possibly Roosevelt, spoke of the importance of keeping the Pope ‘on side’, Stalin is said to have asked sarcastically, ‘And how many army divisions does the Pope command?’ Today, I suppose the equivalent question would be, ‘How many oil wells does the Pope control – and how many jet fighters is he prepared to buy?’

The child abuse scandal did cast a shadow over the visit. I wouldn’t wish to enter into historical or theological controversy but I do feel that the Roman Catholic rule of clerical celibacy has a lot to answer for, and not a great deal to justify its continuation. The Gospels tell us that St. Peter, the ‘rock’ on which the Universal Church of Christ was built, was a married man. A celibate priesthood was not insisted upon during the first thousand years of the Church’s history, and it is known that that some of Pope Benedict’s late-medieval predecessors, although unmarried, were hardly role models of celibacy.

Much was heard from commentators about the fact that the Pope was welcomed in Westminster Hall, where Sir Thomas More (St. Thomas More to Roman Catholics) had been condemned to be beheaded for obeying his conscience in defiance of King Henry VIII. Thomas More was by no means the only victim of 16th century intolerance. It would have been a nice gesture of reconciliation had Pope Benedict made a short pilgrimage to Oxford to spend a few minutes in silence before the Martyrs Memorial. There he could have remembered Archbishop Cranmer, Bishops Latimer and Ridley and many others who were burnt to death (a far more agonising death than beheading) for obeying their consciences in defiance of King Henry’s daughter, the staunchly Roman Catholic Queen Mary.

It would have been a salutary reminder to us all that while a conviction that God is on our side can inspire us to great heights of heroism and self-sacrifice, it can also lead us to inflict unspeakable cruelties on our fellow men and women, unless we give primacy to Jesus Christ’s golden rule ‘Treat other people exactly as you would wish them to treat you!’ Those who kill, mutilate or torture their fellow men and women never have God on their side. ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it (good or bad) unto even the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me!’ said Jesus and, in teaching us to pray to ‘Our Father in Heaven….’, he acknowledged all of us to be his brethren.

Two views on ‘the deficit'

I welcomed Nick Clegg’s recent affirmation of the Coalition Government’s determination to end income tax evasion (which is illegal) and curb income tax avoidance (which sadly isn’t). These activities result in an annual loss to the exchequer of millions of pounds. They are, said Mr Clegg, as bad as benefit fraud. It could be argued that they are much worse, because serious income tax avoiders certainly don’t need the money that they avoid paying. Many are very wealthy individuals who imagine that, because of their wealth, they should be immune from nuisances like the tax demands that burden lesser folk.

Why should they help to pay for the NHS? They can have the pick of the very best surgeons if they need one. Education? They send their kids to posh private (probably called ‘public’!) schools. Police? They have their own security, and their hired guards aren’t hampered by the pettifogging rules that obstruct official police forces.

Anyway, they hire the very best lawyers and accountants to make sure that their tax avoidance is both effective and absolutely legal. Nick Clegg claimed, and I have no doubt he is right, that making sure that multi-millionaires pay minimal, if any, tax has become a lucrative industry. It certainly gives a new slant on the concept of living on immoral earnings!

I wish the government all success with its endeavours, but I’m not holding my breath. The tax avoiders can hire the very best lawyers and accountants. Can a government determined to cut public services afford to hire even better ones?

Needless to say the views of the Confederation of British Industry (“the bosses’ TUC”) are very different from Nick Clegg’s. They have their eyes on ‘benefits’. Not, of course, that they want to abolish them. Perish the thought! They do feel though that some benefits, Child Allowances and the pensioners’ Winter Fuel Allowance for instance, should be means tested so that funds can be diverted to the really needy. I hadn’t heard really needy enunciated quite so unctuously since the departure of Mrs Thatcher from the political scene!

What the CBI and the top politicians, of all parties, overlook is that there is already in force a Means Testing mechanism that assesses everybody’s income and extracts contributions in accordance with ability to pay. It is called Income Tax. It needs only to be progressively and properly graded to ensure that it demands a fair proportion of everyone’s wealth, and tightened up so as to eliminate both tax evasion and tax avoidance. Then it would claw-back unneeded universal benefit, eliminate the need for any other means testing, and ensure that we all shared fairly the burden of closing the deficit.

Beach alert as Sunshine Coast is named skin cancer hotspot

Now there’s a headline calculated to create panic in hundreds of homes! Families who spent a happy holiday here this year will be searching their backs and arms for unaccustomed moles or warts. Those who were thinking of spending a holiday in Clacton (or Brightlingsea, Walton, Frinton or Dovercourt) next year will be having second thoughts. As for us natives, we’ll be seeking urgent appointments with our doctors!

The headline was in the Coastal Daily Gazette on Monday of last week (20th Sept.) and it could hardly have given a more inaccurate impression. Mind you, another accompanying scare headline AREA IN WORST 20 FOR MALIGNANT MELANOMA (yes, it was in black capital letters!) if carefully read, suggested that the situation might not be quite as desperate as had been suggested.

‘In the worst 20?' Well, since Malignant Melanoma is usually caused by over-exposure of unprotected skin to sunshine, it would have been astonishing if East Anglia’s seaside areas had not been more prone to the condition than, for instance, London, Birmingham or Manchester – though almost certainly less prone than Spain’s Costa del Sol or the south of France, where so many Brits. head for their holidays.

In fact we are 18th – only just within the worst 20, wherein are also to be found such famous holiday towns and areas as Bournemouth, the South Devon coast and the Isle of Wight. This means that there are seventeen British holiday areas more dangerous than we are. They must surely include almost every other holiday resort in southern and eastern England.

Our incidence of malignant melanoma is higher than the national average but remember that that average is brought down by inland towns in the Midlands and North-West, better known for their high rainfall than their hours of sunshine. It is also true, and is included in the small print of the Gazette’s news story, that mortality from Melanoma in our area is below the national average thanks to early detection and good treatment.

I reckon that that Gazette headline would have been at least as accurate had it read, Essex Sunshine Coast is well down danger list for skin cancer – and local victims have better than average chance of recovery! But there, good news doesn’t make good headlines!

Tendring Careline speaks for itself on www.tendringcareline.co.uk !

It is now nine months since I signed on as one of the many clients of Tendring Careline, the telephone SOS service available throughout our district, principally to enable old and/or disabled folk like me to get instant help in an emergency. At that time I had recently had a fall. It had been out of doors and my son and daughter-in-law were with me at the time. Consequently I suffered nothing worse than a black eye and broken glasses.

It made me realize though how much worse the situation could have been had I been alone and at home. I might very well have been unable to get onto my feet again without help – and no help would have been available. I am very fortunate in having concerned and caring neighbours, but it would have been many hours before they, or anyone else, realized that anything was amiss.

At about that time Essex County Council (never backward when it comes to self-congratulation!) were publicising what they claimed was their telephonic home-care alarm system, with a ‘special offer’ of a free service for twelve months for new clients over eighty. They could have had me in mind! I contacted County Hall Chelmsford and was a little surprised when a very friendly and helpful lady turned up in a Tendring Council van. It appeared that this ‘new’ County Council service was the tried-and-tested Tendring Careline run by the district council. I remembered having written about it in Tendring Topics ‘in print’ in the Coastal Express when it was first launched in the 1980s. It was now vastly expanded and with thousands, rather than just a few hundred, clients.

The last nine months have been fairly uneventful for me. I haven’t needed the Careline service. I have though, as requested when the system was installed, remembered to press the red button on that gadget round my neck (had I preferred it could have been on a bracelet round my wrist) once a month, to hear a cheery voice asking if I am OK – and to know that the system is working properly. Meanwhile, as I approach my ninetieth birthday, I am conscious of becoming frailer, less steady on my feet and more and more grateful for the Careline safety net. When my ‘get one free’ period ends in the New Year, I shall gladly pay my £16.80 a month (I think I’ll be VAT exempt) for continued protection and reassurance.

Now Tendring Careline has its own web site ( www.tendringcareline.co.uk ). On it you’ll find everything you need to know about the local careline service, including the answer to questions that it might not even have occurred to you to ask! I was very pleased to note that under ‘Testimonials’ there is a very long extract from the blog that I posted onto this website when I first had the Careline installed. Today, I wouldn’t change a word of it!

If either you, or friends or relatives, are old, living alone and vulnerable, do click on that website and find out what Tendring Careline has to offer. Sign on with Tendring Careline and you’ll sleep more easily for knowing that, whatever happens, there’s a friendly voice on hand offering practical help and reassurance.